Happy Birthday to YOU! (New Feature)

antsmarching.org is celebrating its third birthday today, and we're doing it
in a big way. Whereas Dave Matthews' 38th birthday will surely give
fans reason to celebrate, we decided to join in on the fun for our birthday
as well. We're extremely proud to present Tour Central
version 2. We've reworked many of the original features of Tour Central,
and added on some new features that we feel will provide an even deeper
level of interaction.

One major addition is venues. We've added a venue dimension to the shows, so you can
view statistics for a particular venue (Example), view seating charts, and many other things.
Each venue is obviously located in a certain city and state, and we've
broken that down for you as well, so you can view statistics down to the
city level. Our favorite part of this, however, is the fact that you can now
view maps of the entire country or each state, and see where you've seen
shows! (more on that in a bit) You can also look up a show, and view the
national map that shows where everybody came from to see that show. All
these features depend on a simple process, and that is establishing your location. Follow the simple directions
on that page, and you'll have helped contribute to the maps that all users
will be able to view. You can even pinpoint where you sat at a show if the
seating chart is available for that venue. Simply click "I was at this show"
or "Edit Review/Seat Location" (depending on if you've already marked
yourself as at that show), and you'll be presented with a seating chart that
you can click on to mark your location.

With each venue and its location, we also now chart tours, so when you
browse setlists, and choose a tour listed at the right, you will see a
national map, with dots marking stops on the tour, and lines connecting them
in the order they were played. The green dot denotes the start of the tour,
and the red denotes the last stop. (Example: 2004 Summer Tour)

Finally, you can view maps of where you've seen shows. Simply navigate to Your Tour
Central, and you're presented with a national map that marks all the
shows you've seen. You can then choose a state below the map, and it will
show you all the shows you've seen in that state, with numbers representing
multiple shows seen at a single venue.

We hope you like version 2 of Tour Central. We wanted to do something
special for the fans that have helped make the last three years so great.

The views and comments expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of antsmarching.org.